Hangover Management

One of life’s cruelties, the hangover. Hangovers can come in all shapes and sizes, see this buzzfeed for some examples.

As we age, they have become an inescapable truth, which seems to only increase in severity. Gone are the days when you could have a humongous night of apocalash to wake up just feeling a little fuzzy and tired the next day. PLD (post lash depression) is a very real and dangerous condition, which should be avoided wherever possible.

Here, I’ll run through a few tricks and techniques to allow you to maximise boozing and minimise next day troughing, some will be old hat, but hopefully there’s some brand new information in here, which will help you cheat the system and have a manageable next day as well as lashtastic night out.

A) The obvious easy wins – rarely possible, but are the surest ways to dodge the downside

Stop drinking earlier. You’ll be suprised at how much you can get away with drinking if you stop early and give your body time to process it overnight. Obviously the longer you have before you get up, the better a job your body will do with eliminating the toxins from your system.

Stay hydrated. Wherever possible get some clean water on board, before, during and after boozing. Your body needs it to process the alcohol and replace the lost fluids from its diuretic effect. Dehydration accounts for a large proportion of next day headaches, so do the easy thing and chug a couple of pints of H2O before bed at the very least.

Drink less – lol

B) You know you should, but rarely do

Stick to clear spirits – these contain less hangover inducing toxins than their darker cousins and beer or wine. Ever get a stinker after just a couple of pints? A lot of industrially brewed beers contain a cocktail of chemicals to preserve the flavour/extend the shelf life of the beer, which will give you those unfair mid-week grumblers.

Clean mixers – soda water is your friend here, tonic water being a close second. You want to avoid sugary and caffeinated drinks here as they’ll have your energy levels all over the place and disrupt your already disrupted sleep further.

C) Weird, but wonderful

Vitamin C – boosts your liver’s detox function, so take high doses before, during and after wherever possible (1000mg with every drink is the ideal, but obviously comes with a price of popping pills while you’re out so I’ve never actually done it).

You sure that was Vitamin C, Chow?

Activated Charcoal – used by medics and the military to treat people who have been exposed to poison/toxins, it is effectively a sponge for almost any bad sh1t that you can ingest. It’s only useful if it’s in the stomach at the same time as the baddies, so again, unfortunately before, during and after is the ideal. I usually end up just popping 2/3 when I’m home to try and retrospectively perform damage limitation, again because bringing out tablets on a night out is a) very open to misinterpretation b) fecking weird if not narcotic.

Milk Thistle – similar to Vit C. this supposedly boosts liver function, so helps your body’s natural clean up process, and you guessed it, ideally before, during and after booze. A little more pricey than the others, I go through phases depending whether it’s on offer in Boots or Holland and Barretts…

And there we have it, hopefully a few little things to play around with, and hopefully salvage some Saturday/Sunday mornings for you in weekends to come!